


Someone Hurt My Spider-Bro

by Q_loves_you



Series: A Hurt Spider [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Gen, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt/Comfort, Ned Leeds is a Good Bro, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-05-28 10:45:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15047159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Q_loves_you/pseuds/Q_loves_you
Summary: After crashing a plane on Coney Island, Peter is hurt and alone. But not so alone because he has Ned.A prequel/related thing to Who Hurt My Spider-Son? (Oh It Was Me)





	1. one

The conflicting impulses of ‘get away’ and ‘wait to make sure’ brought Peter to the top of the Cyclone, out of sight, a safe distance, but close enough that he could see Happy arrive and find Mr. Toomes. But as people started swarming, Stark personnel clearing the beach and reporters vying for a closer look at the wreckage, the adrenaline started to wear off and new worries arose.

Like the fact that his shoulders were both still bleeding, he probably had a concussion or twelve, and he was pretty sure something was broken and/or sprained in at least two places. And he was on top of a roller coaster miles from anywhere he would like to be with no suit AI and no medical supplies or any idea what to do now. He couldn’t go home in this state. The dance...was probably over? Or maybe it was still going. Peter had lost track of time somewhere between being buried under a building and falling off a burning plane.

Ned. He should call Ned and text May he’d be staying at Ned’s. He didn’t move. His entire body ached, and there was a lot of ground to cover between Coney Island and Queens.

Well, Queens wasn’t getting any closer. Slowly, carefully, Peter moved. His phone was cracked all to hell, but miraculously still functional.

Ned picked up on the first ring.

“Peter?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“Peter! You’re alive! The news said the plane crashed! Are you okay? I got kicked out of the dance, and I couldn’t get back to a computer or anything for like an hour and then you weren’t answering the phone! Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” Peter said, then thought. “Well, mostly. Kind of? I don’t know. Can I crash at your place tonight? I can’t...May can’t see me like this.”

“Yeah, of course.” Ned’s voice had abruptly become softer, and Peter wondered how terrible he sounded and if he could even get away with calling May. “Whatever you need, dude.”

“Thanks. I’ll be there in like half an hour. Your window’s unlocked, right?”

“It will be. See you soon.”

Peter hung up and texted May.

_Staying at Ned’s is that ok?_

_Sure, how was the dance?_

Peter stared at his phone for a full minute.

_It was ok. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow!_

There. That looked normal enough and wasn’t so far from the truth. He even had an exclamation point. Nothing to worry about.

***

It took about forty minutes to get to Ned’s. About halfway there he had slipped slightly and jostled his injured shoulder (his more injured than the other shoulder) and had to slow down. Finally, he slipped through Ned’s bedroom window to find Ned waiting for him.

“Holy crap!” he whisper-shouted once he got a good look at Peter. He stood up and maneuvered Peter towards his desk chair. “Oh my god, you’re bleeding. Did you get _stabbed_? Oh my god, dude, I don’t think I have a big enough first aid kit for this.”

“It’s okay,” Peter said hoarsely. “I heal fast.”

“Okay. Okay, okay, okay. Stay there. I’m gonna see what we’ve got.” Ned hurried out of the room as Peter started peeling off layers of homemade spider-suit to get a better look at the damage.

It turned out the Leeds family did keep a reasonably thorough first aid kit in their bathroom. Peter was pretty sure a normal human would have needed stitches, but a whole lot of neosporin and a bit of gauze would have to do for him.

(They had to google how to treat burns and tell if an ankle was twisted or sprained and what the difference in treatment was and how to treat a concussion and tell if ribs were broken. They didn’t seem to be, but his right wrist and his left ankle were sprained.)

The bruises and burns were going to be an issue to explain, but that could be Tomorrow Peter’s problem. Ned had gone quiet, the gravity of what had happened sinking in.

“This is like...a really bad version of that meme with like, you, your date, your date’s dad and stuff.”

Peter half-laughed at that. “A really bad version.”

“Yeah…. I’m sorry I couldn’t help more,” Ned blurted out.

“What?” Peter shook his head quickly and stopped when that hurt. “Ned, you were great! If it wasn’t for you, I would’ve gone down in the school parking lot! I’ll be fine, really. But uh, sleep first. Getting the crap kicked out of you really takes a lot of energy.”

“Oh, yeah, sure! Take the bed, dude, you’re beat.”

“Are you sure?” Peter asked, though he was already limping over to it.

Ned rolled his eyes. “Yes, I’m sure. You just got your ass kicked and saved the world. You at least deserve a bed.”

“Thanks. I’d say we can share, but I’d probably end up sticking my hand to your face in my sleep.”

Ned probably said something in response, but Peter was already asleep.

***

Watching his shirtless best friend sleep would normally fall under the “creepy” heading for Ned, but he figured in this particular situation, he was probably ok. Peter had nearly died, from the looks of it several times. Ned couldn’t be blamed for wanting to make sure he kept breathing through the night.

Peter’s phone buzzed, an incoming call from Happy.

Ned glanced at Peter’s sleeping form and answered quietly. “Hello?”

“Who is this?”

“Ned.”

“Great,” Happy sighed, “Where the hell is Peter?”

“He’s asleep right now.”

“But he’s with you?” Happy sounded almost worried, which Ned thought was an improvement over his attitude when he’d last spoken to him.

“Yeah. He’s with me.”

“I’ve been looking all over for him. You tell him next time he gets in trouble like this, actually, no, no next time-”

“He’s okay,” Ned interrupted, “I mean, pretty beat up and exhausted, but he’s okay. You can stop looking.”

There was silence for a few seconds, which Ned chose to interpret as guilty. “Call if he’s too hurt for you to handle, got it?”

“Got it.”

And Happy hung up. Ned put Peter’s phone down and went back to his totally not creepy watching Peter sleep.

The thing was, Peter looked _bad_. And not badass, just bad. His face was bruised and cut up and scraped and singed, and his hands were burned enough that Ned had tried very hard to get Peter to go to a hospital. (He wouldn’t. Ned understood why, but _hands were important_ , Peter. They had _lots of nerve endings, Peter_.) Not to mention the freakin’ stab wounds in his shoulders from where the Vulture had apparently sunk his talons into Peter to lift him into the air and then smash him into the ground a bunch. Ned wasn’t totally clear on the details, but that was what he gathered from Peter’s rough description of the fight and his injuries. Plus there were the sprains in his ankle and wrist that made Ned worry a lot, because Peter _swung to Queens_ from _Coney Island_ with a _sprained wrist and ankle_ , like that was just a thing that people could do. Also _stab wounds_.

Ned wasn’t an angry person by nature, but if he ever saw Mr. Toomes, he had some strong words in mind. For that matter, he also had some words for Happy Hogan and Tony Stark, but he doubted he’d ever actually say any of them even if he did meet them.

He was tempted, almost, to call Happy back and tell him that no, Ned couldn’t handle how hurt Peter was, and they needed real adults with medical training and proper equipment. But Peter didn’t want him to, Ned knew, so he wouldn’t. He could handle it.

***

Three days after Peter had crashed a plane, after he had gone back to Ned’s to get patched up for injuries that were _totally handle-able, Ned_. Two days after he had gone back to his own apartment after sneaking out through Ned’s window again so Ned’s parents wouldn’t see him, after making up something about homecoming to tell May, after Peter’s injuries had healed, and he had slept for most of the day, Ned dragged him out to go shopping.

“So, what are we shopping for?” Peter asked as they started walking.

“First aid supplies,” Ned said. Peter winced.

“Yeah, sorry, I used up all your-”

“Not the point, Peter,” Ned sighed. Peter frowned. There was something off. Ned seemed weirdly anxious and serious.

“What, uh, is the point, then?”

“The point is that you were seriously hurt, and we didn’t have everything we needed, and I don’t want that to happen ever again. So we’re gonna get everything we can think of and also first aid training. You should probably get first aid certified for being Spider-Man anyway, and this way I can actually patch you up next time you get hurt that bad.”

Peter reminded himself to hug Ned the next time they weren't walking down a busy street and liable to block traffic. “Oh,” he said, “thanks, Ned.”

Ned nodded. “It's an honor, Spider-Man.”


	2. two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be honest, the main function of this chapter is to connect the first one to the other part of this series. But I think it does so in an enjoyable way!

Peter hadn’t been going out as Spider-Man quite as often since...well, everything, but particularly since May had found out. After a lot of yelling and crying and some pleading, she had agreed to let him continue being Spider-Man, but she worried, and Peter knew that, so he did what he could to make her worry less.

But he couldn’t stop being Spider-Man. He couldn’t stop fighting bad guys and helping people, even if he did occasionally get injured in the process. And if that injury happened to be worse than some scrapes and some bruises, if some lucky mugger got him with a knife in the shoulder and it was actually kind of deep (not so much that he was all that worried but enough to look bad anyway) well, May didn’t need to know, right?

To be fair, Ned probably also didn’t need to know, but Ned had the first aid supplies because, “if you have them, you’ll just use them yourself and never tell me when you’re injured, and plus what if you’re injured in, like, the middle of your back where you can’t reach and you need me to help, but the first aid kit is at your place, and I’m somewhere else?” which Peter had eventually agreed was a good point or at least tangentially related to a good point, and they had an arrangement that Peter went to Ned’s with anything in between slap-a-bandaid-on-it and call-Tony-Stark levels of injury.

It was an arrangement that Peter thought was unfairly dependent on sneaking around Ned’s parents. Ned said he didn’t mind.

“They probably think I’m finally being a normal, angsty teenager. It’s fine.”

“I dunno, I just don’t like making you lie to them,” Peter said.

“Well...the lying isn’t the greatest, but I think it’s worth it. I’m helping my best friend Spider-Man.”

So Peter let the subject drop and did his best not to need Ned’s medical attention, which was probably a good thing anyway.

***

Peter’s patrol started with an attempted mugging, continued with five more and a couple of car crashes, one of them fatal. One of the mugging victims called the cops on him after he rescued her, shouting about creepy spider vigilantes and how enhanced individuals were a menace to society. Peter left her mid-rant to pull a few more people out of a fire a few blocks away.

By midnight, Karen was recommending he go home, and Peter was tempted to agree with her. His suit, which usually made him feel larger than life, invincible and heroic, felt too tight and too thin. New York City was too loud and bright, and his nose was assaulted by all the smells of thousands of people living crammed together.

He probably should have gone home, but he couldn’t stand the thought of the look on May’s face if she saw him like this.

“Karen, text Ned I’m on my way.”

In fifteen minutes, he was climbing in the window of Ned’s room.

“Peter, hi, are you okay?”

“I…” Peter could hear Ned’s heart beating, his parents sleeping down the hall, water sloshing through pipes, the click of a thermostat downstairs.

“Peter?”

“I’m okay.” Three people had died in a car crash before he got to them.

“No, you’re not.” The mask was suffocating him, so he pulled it off, blinking against the bright lights of Ned’s room. It wasn’t wet, and there was no concrete on his back.

“I’m not injured.” A few bruises were the worst he’d gotten tonight, but how many times would that not be the case? And three people had died just tonight, nevermind all the other nights when he didn’t patrol.

“Then what’s wrong? Something’s wrong, Peter.”

“Nothing...everything. I don’t know, Ned. I can’t...I can’t breathe.” His face was wet, and he realized he was crying, but he didn’t know why except that it had something to do with a bad patrol, something to do with a falling building, probably something to do with his overloaded senses, with the choking anxiety that had been following him for months, with Tony Stark’s furious face emerging from the Iron Man suit, with Liz crying and moving to Oregon, with guilt and fear and Ben.

***

Ned wasn’t sure what he had expected when Peter texted that he was on his way over at midnight, but it hadn’t been for Peter to stumble in, claim he was fine, and then start crying. Maybe it should have been.

Ned had a pretty basic understanding of stuff like anxiety and panic attacks, and he was pretty sure that was what was happening, and that breathing was important in this situation. He would have to look into the specifics later.

“Okay. Okay, Peter, everything’s gonna be alright. Let’s just...sit down and breathe, okay? Breathe with me, Peter. In...out. Okay, again.”

They continued like this for a while, sitting face-to-face on the floor, Peter trembling but slowly breathing more regularly, Ned trying (and probably failing, he thought) to project a calm he wasn’t feeling.

“I’m sorry,” Peter said finally.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not. It’s...you should be asleep or...I-I shouldn’t be-”

“Peter, it’s okay. I wasn’t going to be asleep anyway, and you should be whatever you need to be.”

“I’m _scared_ ,” Peter said, “I’m Spider-Man. I’m a superhero. But I’m still so scared all the time.”

“Dude, you survived a plane crash like a week ago. Of course you’re scared.” Ned wasn’t sure if that was as reassuring as he’d meant for it to be.

“It’s not just the plane crash,” Peter mumbled.

“Oh. Well, what...do you want to talk about what else it is?”

“I think...I think I have to?” Peter shook his head. “I just...it’s hard to - to know how to start. Um.”

“Well, you never told me the details of what happened that night,” Ned suggested, “So maybe start with finding out Toomes was Liz’s dad?”

“Okay.... He opened the door when I got there to pick up Liz. I was so freaked out, I don’t know what they thought I was doing, but then in the car, Toomes figured out who I was.”

Peter described his threatening conversation with Toomes, and Ned could fill in what happened from there until he arrived at Toomes’ lair or whatever. But after that was a big question mark until Peter crawled in through his bedroom window.

“So you got there and confronted him,” Ned said, “But then how did he get on the plane?”

“He…” Peter took a few deep breaths and blinked out a few more tears. “He made his wingsuit take out the pillars holding the roof up. The, uh, the whole building collapsed on me.”

“Holy crap.”

“Yeah,” Peter said quietly. “It was...I thought I was gonna die, Ned. I could've died, and there wasn't...I tried to call for help? But there wasn't anyone there, and I was gonna die alone under that building-” Peter cut himself off with a choked sob.

“Peter…that's...wait, how did you get out then?”

“I lifted it.”

“You lifted a _building_?”

“...Yeah.”

“Dude, that’s...I mean, obviously that’s not awesome. But you got out, so that’s good.”

“I guess, but...I don’t know, Ned. I still don’t feel...right. It’s like...like every time I close my eyes, I’m still under that building.”

“You’re not, Peter,” Ned said, which then sounded insensitive so he continued, “I mean, you’re here. You’re here with me, and I can remind you of that from now on whenever it gets bad, right?”

Peter nodded shakily. “Right.”

They sat in silence for a while. Then Peter moved to stand up.

“Where are you going?”

“I smell like New York alleyways and also smoke. Can I use your shower?”

“Oh. Yeah, sure.”

“Thanks.”

Peter crept out of the room, probably unnecessarily quietly for how deeply Ned’s parents slept, and Ned was left alone with his thoughts.

He had known it was bad. He had known that Peter threw himself into danger every day as Spider-Man, and that it had an effect on him. But this was...a lot.

Well, Ned decided, he had some research to do. He pulled his laptop toward him and started googling.

Peter returned, smelling less like alleyways and fire and more like soap, and pulled out Ned’s extra bedding and sleeping bag.

“You take the bed this time,” he told Ned, and Ned didn’t argue.

“Did you text May?”

“Oh. Not yet. Thanks.”

Peter stared at his phone for a while.

“Peter?” Ned said eventually.

“...She’s probably asleep.”

“She’ll wake up at some point, and if you aren’t there in the morning she’ll probably freak out,” Ned pointed out.

Peter closed his eyes briefly. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“...So, are you going to text her?”

Peter slowly typed out a text and sent it. “She worries about me so much, Ned.”

Ned privately thought that she probably should, but instead he said, “She’s also super proud of you, Peter. I mean, who wouldn’t be proud of their kid being a superhero? You’re helping people, and you’re staying as safe as possible, right?”

“Yeah, I guess. I just hate worrying her, but I can’t stop, and we all know it, and it’s just...it sucks sometimes.”

“But sometimes it’s pretty great, right?” Ned said encouragingly, “I mean, I know it’s hard, but you love being Spider-Man, and now you don’t have to sneak around as much to do it, so that’s good, right?”

“Right. Yeah, you’re right. It’s just...y’know.”

“I know.”

“We should go to sleep.”

“Okay. Goodnight, Peter.”

“Night, Ned.”

***

Flash was such an asshole. He’d been bothering Peter all day, with everything from “Penis Parker” to nudges that were more like shoves in the hallway to yet more mocking about the Stark Internship and how it probably wasn’t real. Peter said nothing, of course, backing down at every opportunity and doing his best to ignore Flash, but Ned could tell it was wearing on him.

Finally, he snapped. “Flash, shut up. Everyone knows you’re just jealous that Peter’s smarter and better than you, and you’re just a bully who can’t even come up with creative names to call him anyway.”

Peter stared at him. Flash stared at him. The half of their gym class who had noticed what was going on stared at him. Part of Ned wanted to hide from the stares, but most of him didn’t care. He was so done with Flash’s shit.

“What the hell did you just say to me?” And oh, right, this was why Ned usually didn’t get involved. Because with Flash storming towards him and everyone’s eyes on him, he suddenly felt so very small. His mouth went dry, and damn it, he was supposed to be defending Peter, but he couldn’t say anything.

Then suddenly, Peter was in front of him, one hand held out to stop Flash coming any closer. “Just leave us alone, Flash,” he said firmly. Flash scoffed and took a step closer.

“Or what? Gonna get your buddy Tony Stark to come rescue you?”

“Leave us alone,” Peter repeated, and Ned couldn’t see his face, but his voice was different, more confident. It was enough to make Flash reconsider. Or maybe it was their gym teacher meandering towards them. Either way, Flash just scoffed again and turned away. Ned breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thanks,” he said.

Peter shrugged. “Thank you, dude. You actually got him to shut up for a minute. That was pretty badass.”

Ned smiled. “I know, right?” he said excitedly. “He was picking on you all day, and it was like I just finally snapped, and I was all “Shut up, Flash,” and he was all….”

***

Peter had good days, bad days, mediocre days, and terrible days. And sometimes, he just had three bad days in a row, and then something crashed to the ground in the cafeteria.

Peter wasn’t the only one who jumped and covered his ears. He looked over at the kitchen where the noise had come from, and someone was there making gestures that probably meant everything was okay. A few people laughed self-consciously, and the cafeteria grew noisy and cheerful again.

He turned to Ned and opened his mouth to continue their conversation, but the words stuck in his throat. The crash was still echoing in his ears, louder and louder like a building collapsing around him, and oh, his day just went from mediocre to terrible.

“Peter? You okay?” Ned asked.

Peter shook his head. He couldn’t breathe. He was thinking too much and not at all at the same time.

“Is this a panic attack?”

Peter nodded. Probably.

“Okay. Okay, okay. Let’s get out of here, okay? Go somewhere quieter.” Ned stood up, grabbing both of their bags and guiding Peter to his feet and out into the hallway. They found an empty bathroom and Ned ushered Peter inside, closing the door behind them. Peter sank to the floor, trying not to think about how gross this was, and Ned knelt down next to him. “Okay,” he said again, sounding a little less frantic now, in contrast to Peter’s building panic. “So, I looked up what to do with panic attacks. We're gonna start by breathing together, okay?”

“Okay,” Peter managed to say.

“Right. In, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four,” he counted slowly. They sat on the floor like that for a while, breathing together. Slowly, Peter’s thoughts stopped spiralling out of control, and his heart rate slowed to something more like a normal human rate. He wasn’t stuck under a building alone. He was in a grimy school bathroom with Ned. He wasn’t in danger of anything other than embarrassment and possibly some disease from sitting on the floor of a school bathroom. Ned was here, and Peter was here, and nothing was falling down around them.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Are you feeling better?” Ned asked anxiously.

“Yeah. Mostly.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Peter shrugged. “Not much to say. You already know.”

“I guess. But there’s not, like, any new horrible trauma I should know about, right?”

“No. Just...it’s been a bad week, and I’m super tense, so the whole crashing thing with the heightened senses, and...I guess I just snapped a little. Sorry.”

“It’s fine. And also not your fault. I’m pretty sure you have PTSD, and this kind of thing happens. It’s not your fault.”

Peter didn’t respond to that. He was pretty sure Ned was right, but he didn’t want to admit it, and he didn’t know what to do about it anyway.

“Do you think...maybe you should tell someone?” Ned asked eventually.

“Like who?” Peter sighed.

“Like an adult? Like May or Mr. Stark?”

“I can’t tell May,” Peter said immediately. “Don’t tell May. She’s freaked out enough about Spider-Man as it is, she doesn’t need to know about this. And Mr. Stark would probably make me tell her, and I’m supposed to be a superhero, Ned! What if Mr. Stark thinks I can’t handle this? He might take the suit away again!”

“Hey, hey, woah, stop. Breathe. You don’t have to tell anyone. I don’t think Mr. Stark would do that anyway, but you don’t have to tell him if you don’t want to. It was just a suggestion, ‘cause I don’t know how much help I actually am, and I thought maybe an actual adult would do better.”

“Ned, you’re the best. You calmed me down in, like, no time. How did you even know how to do that?”

“I researched,” Ned said.

“Why? When?”

“Pretty much when you showed up in my room having a panic attack. I figured if I knew more about it, I’d be able to help you more.”

Peter stood up, and Ned followed suit. “Thanks, Ned.” Peter hugged him.

“Any time, Spider-Man.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tada! Hope you enjoyed! Many thanks to my friend Jessie for motivating me to actually write and helping me through all the writer's block!


End file.
